Editor's Note

The Charge

He gave his soul to the sea and his heart to a woman.

But actually, it's a lot cooler than that.

Opening Statement

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea is a film of
contradictions. Beautiful and disturbing, erotic and psychotic, this
melodramatic thriller is a film of unsettling dichotic elements. Quite an
infamous film in its day (due to its shocking subject matter and modestly
explicit sexuality), it has been transferred lovingly to DVD in beautiful
anamorphic widescreen. Just be prepared to file it in the "oddest films
I've ever seen" category of your mind.

Facts of the Case

Anne Osbourne (Sarah Miles) lives on the coast of England near the sea with
her son, Jonathan. Anne is a widow, and together she and Jonathan live something
of an isolated life, even from each other. In fact, Jonathan has taken up
sneaking out at night to a rocky outcrop of caves, where he meets up with a
group of young boys, to talk about how stupid adults are, and to browse over
pictures of naked women having sex. This faux-fascist secret society is led by
"The Chief," a particularly jaded and persuasive boy who rouses his
cohorts with feelings of animosity towards the adults. The Chief has ideas about
the nature of the world, of the pure and perfect order of the universe, where
only the strong survive—and where adults are merely broken-down and weak
failures, shadows of their potential.

One day, a rugged and handsome American sailor ships into town. Jim (Kris
Kristofferson) and Anne take to one another as pieces of a puzzle long missing,
copulating their relationship with great fervor. Jonathan, meanwhile, is taken
somewhat aback by this strange development in their life. On the one hand, here
is a man, an adult, who by nature cannot be trusted; but on the other hand, he
finds himself instinctively liking Jim. In a way, Jim is the father figure
Jonathan never had. With his gruff exterior, scars and rugged beard, here is
someone who fits perfectly into the perfect order of things, thinks Jonathan.
Jim, he is sure, is destined for great things.

On the other hand, Jim does the things he does to Jonathan's mother, things
that the boy watches, secretly, through a peephole into their bedroom. When Jim
ships out to sea, Jonathan is disappointed, but secretly relieved, glad to
return to the normalcy, the perfect equation of his life…that is, until
Jim's ship comes back into town.

Suddenly, Jonathan's life is threatened in a real and profound way.
Disturbed, he calls upon The Chief for assistance in dealing with this invasion
into his existence, and together, they formulate a plan to "address"
the issue. After all, to find truth, to find the center of reality, rules must
be taken apart…

The Evidence

There is something distinctively Lord
of the Flies about The Sailor Who Fell From Grace From The Sea, both
literary and cinematically, and if you have seen the film, you know all about
what I mean. Having read the original novel by Yukio Mishima (translated from
the Japanese, of course, as my hiragana is rusty), I can testify that the
film stays reasonably faithful to the tone and subject of the novel, though the
story has been altered slightly, being transferred from the Japanese coast to
the English seaside.

Mishima, as a writer, is something of an oddity. After much critical success
and acclaim, he publicly declared that he would fulfill his life's work and
write his masterpiece—the epic Sea of Fertility tetralogy—and
then he would die. He sat to work, and six years later, when he completed the
last page of the last novel, he mailed it to his publisher, grabbed a megaphone,
and took control of a military installation. There, he proceeded to shout
political ideology to the world, while at the same time, ritualistically
disemboweling himself. Not surprisingly, the disconcerting undertones of this
film (and the book) are downright troubling.

Though taken from a point earlier in his career, the same themes penetrate
Mishima's work in The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea as with his
later, more infamous work—the decay of life, the thin shell of contentment
that surrounds a poisoned and rotted existence, the decline of Japanese society,
and the death of old traditions that shall lead into an apocalyptic nightmare;
things like that. Obviously, some of these images get lost in this particular
cinematic adaptation. You would have to be pretty astute, or drunk, or both, to
pull out the decline of traditional Japanese life from this film. But very
little of this has anything to do with the movie itself, so enough about the
book then; now on to the film.

This is a bizarre film, even in the most conservative sense. The oddly
ambiguous and Oedipal sexuality combined with social allegory creates something
particularly elegant and nasty at the same time, like a Todd Solondz or David
Lynch film, or even a Stanley Kubrick film. Upon first glance, the images of
family life, happiness, and contentment are pure and clean, until you scratch
away the veneer to find the underscore rotted away entirely. The Sailor
moves at its own pace, deliberately, and chooses to keep its pace rather than
stop and explain the motivations of its characters. This, I feel, is probably
the weakest element of the film. Having read the book, I know all about the
things that motivate The Chief, and Jonathan, and so on, but this information is
more or less absent from the film. Like many literary adaptations, the
back-story and motivations often get left behind from the characters. This does
change the tone somewhat, but traces of the big picture remain behind, enough to
get a glimpse of something profound and disturbing. Though it never once
explains the motivations behind their actions, it is more difficult than you may
think to come away from the film dismissing the children as psychotics. It may
not be palatable, but there is a sense of greater disharmony in the film, as if
the entire world is psychotic along with them.

The metaphors are pretty out on the open. The most amusing of which is the
ship, as a pulsing thing of sexuality, almost Cronenbergian in its reverence by
the widow (and eerily, by the kid, too). This film, like the sea itself, is
something that appears to be nothing but a never-ending panorama of scenic
beauty, but is in fact merely the window-dressing for a brutal and powerful
force of nature that can tear any ship or man asunder. The ending to this film
is so decayed; so rotten (in the pejorative sense, thank you) that it leaves an
acrid taste in your mouth for days. The Sailor is a film that, by its
very nature, punishes sentimentality and weakness, and yet, through its form,
almost dares you to feel that way about the film. Do so at your own risk.

The transfer is quite stunning. Restored from the original archival
elements, the anamorphic transfer is a thing of beauty, showing off the
beautiful cinematography. Some noticeable spots and dust occasionally crop up,
but considering the age of the film, this is excusable. This beautiful new
restoration shows off the fantastic widescreen composition and cinematography by
Douglas Slocombe (who would go on to shoot another obscure film called Raiders of the Lost Ark). His
panoramic shots of the English seacoast and countryside, and his subtle use of
color, are mesmerizing, and some amazing compositions take place within the
depth of field.

The music is simply mono, and is quite functional. No dialogue is distorted,
and this DVD manages to avoid the nasty mono pitfall of having all sound
emanating from the speakers in an indistinct blur. The score, dreamily composed
by Johnny Mandel (M*A*S*H) harmonizes
perfectly with the timbre and tone of the film, and sounds quite effective. This
DVD is bare-boned; there is no extra content, supplementary features, or even
subtitles to speak of. Given the relative obscurity of the title, it is hardly
surprising.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

This is the first DVD I have ever seen that actually featured DVD directions.
At the bottom, in plain sight, it suggests storing the DVD in cool, dry
conditions. Amusing, yes—unless you have heard vicious tell of a horrible
condition known as "DVD rot." I shan't go into the details here and
frighten away our readership, but suffice it to say, it is best to follow the
directions as written.

Is this a premonition of things to come? We'll see.

Closing Statement

As a film, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea is utterly
unclassifiable. Far too romantic and moving to be a psychological thriller, but
far too disturbing and upsetting to ever be a love film, the movie exists in the
uncomfortable shadows between both genres, a seldom-occupied location. The sheer
brutality of the film is as uncompromising as its sentimentality.

You can see the outcome from miles away, and there is nothing that can be
done about it. Like life, it simply happens. It cannot be avoided. This makes
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea an uncompromising,
spellbinding, frustrating and profoundly disturbing film.

The Verdict

Man, those kids give me the creeps. Not guilty!

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